Apple is keeping it pricey with a $49 cable for its new Thunderbolt interface. (Source: Ubergizmo)

(Source: iFixIt)

Apple's Thunderbolt cable contains over 10 chips (Source: iFixIt)

But this cable has chips, so it must be worth it!

Apple,
Inc. (AAPL) is borrowing a play from
Monster Cables offering a cable that's almost as pricey as the peripherals it
plans to support. The new Thunderbolt cable will retail for $49 USD.

Plugging in to the Mini Display Port of new
MacBook Pros and iMacs,
the cable offers support for "Thunderbolt", a new high speed
communications standard from Intel Corp. (INTC). With the first
peripheral (a RAID drive bay from Pegasus)
launching, attention has turned to this pricey little number.

IFixIttore the white cable
apart and found a pair of Gennum
GN2033 chips hiding beneath the sheathing, with one on each connector
of the cable. In total there were also 10 other smaller tiny chips and an
assortment of transistors, etc.

And there's the question of USB 3.0, which has already seen much more broad
adoption. USB 3.0 offers transfer speeds of up to 4 Gbit/s. While
only about half the speed of the current Thunderbolt implementation, that's
still pretty blazing fast so the question remains how many customers will
actually notice a difference.

To Monster Cables' credit, at least it only charges $29 for
its "gold-plated" USB 2.0 cables, which it brags "rejects
noise" and works to "maximize signal integrity." Sound
familiar?

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This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

Funny how you selected only a few statements to 'disprove' and completely disregarded the rest.He's completely right on most points. The biggest concern is that apple charges more for weaker hardware. So let's compare. The only real competition to the MBP 13 is the HP envy 14.

In their base models, you get a similar i5 cpu (2.3 GHz), with the Envy getting 2GB of ram more, a larger HDD and a standalone graphics card. With apple, you get a 16:10 screen with a bigger vertical resolution, you get a thiner and lighter device, and you get a better quality screen and a better battery. Extras such as magsafe adapter and a better trackpad on one side, and USB 3.0 on the other are worthy mentions.When you put all of that together, as always, it comes down to your personal preference. I don't need a GPU, so that's the first thing i will remove from my calculations. With the macbook, i get a lighther machine, that can use all three majos operating systems, that i use regularly (XCode i.e.), that is lighter and with a better battery (and better power management in OS X). And it costs just 200 more. It is not noticeablely slower, and even if it was, it wouldn't be more than a few seconds on a one minute task. I waste more time going to the toilet with newspapers :D

I just don't understand why there's such a hate towards apple, when you have, by your own words, so much to chose from from other manufacturers.

In a laptop world, performance is not everything, especially on a 13-14'' device. Battery, construction, keyboard and trackpad and screen quality are my five top things in this form factor.

It has nothing to do with steve, or magic. It has to do with the features i expect and simply the fact that one is the closest.

Funny how you selected only a few statements to 'disprove' and completely disregarded the rest.

The video card in the HP machine makes the integrated Intel graphics in the MBP look like a wind-up toy. And is easily worth $200 in additional cost. But hey, we can ignore that huge fact because you don't care about it.

eSata, as usual for Apple, is ignored in favor of the antiquated firewire connection. HP has it.

I did mention the graphics card. And i said that it comes down to personal preference. Somebody needs a graphics card in a 13'' laptop. I don't. Most people I know don't. I doubt they are an unrepresentative group of people.

I'm just saying that in this form factor, performance isn't everything, it usually isn't in the top 5 on which you will make your decision. Apple has quite a few advantages, that are, in my opinion, much more important for a real mobile laptop.